


Humans Are Strange

by orphan_account



Category: Siren (TV 2018)
Genre: Angry mermaids, Angst, Blood and Violence, F/F, F/M, I started rewatching Siren and this is what happens, Ryn's first day on land...does not go well tbh, archive warning for non-con scene in the car, but Ryn murders him soooo..., except she will not kill the pretty lady in blue (maddie) bc I said so, humans are strange and vile and Ryn is not afraid to kill a man, should I be sorry? bc I'm not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23993833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ryn's first day on land...does not go so well. She's just trying to find her sister, and find their pack some food, but of course the humans get in the way. Humans so often get in the way.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Humans Are Strange

**Author's Note:**

> Or, the one where I was supposed to be re-watching Siren and instead starting writing this fic. I make no apologizes for my wandering brain ;)
> 
> This features a very-new-to-land Ryn Fisher exploring Bristol Cove in the pilot episode, and her various encounters with humans those first couple days on land. Pairings are Ryn/Maddie/Ben and Maddie/Ben, trigger-warning is for the scene in the car.
> 
> TW starts with "Ryn accepts his ride to somewhere..." and ends with "the vile human man will die", please skip it over if you need to!

* * *

She wakes, disoriented and, and… _itchy_. There’s something draped over her chest, her shoulders, her legs - she thinks these kind, these _humans_ , call it clothing. It’s awful. Scratchy and ill-fitting and stained the color of dead, tropical jellyfish left to bleed and rot on the shore.

She is in a strange man’s dwelling, and he offers an apology - about the clothes, maybe. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. She’s oddly _hungry_ now that she’s awake _. Yes, okay._ The pang in her stomach is different, but it’s hunger all the same. _Need food._

She looks about her surroundings but can find no food, or at least not any that she’d recognize. There’s an odd-looking container to her side, resembling the ocean in miniature. Tiny fish dart about in their cage, with rocks and sand below them and little bits and baubles as decoration. Pitiful.

Perhaps she should break the cage, free them from their tiny prison.

No. _Food._ She needs food.

The air is warmer here, inside. She does not like it. Everything feels odd. Off, somehow. Because she doesn’t belong here. And she’s hungry. So, so hungry. _Must focus. Find food, find sister._

She turns away from the tiny ocean and peers at the table in front of her. There are shells in a wooden basket and she picks one up, smells it - finally, _something to eat!_ Her heart sings with the promise of clams, oysters, and the fresh salt of the sea on her tongue. But when she brings the shell up to her lips and mouth, the scent of the sea is faint and there are no muscles to devour.

 _Empty._ Sadness and hunger claw through her, but also…she is curious and full of strange wonder. Why does he have all these shells, if not for food? Why does he keep them if not for eating?

The strange man says something again. About the shells. The clams, yes. She is hungry, and tired, and cannot speak. Those from her pack had once said speaking on land was the hardest - and now she understands. He says more, this strange human with eyes like pretty, gleaming seaglass and a smile like the sun. He offers her things she has no name for, but his smile is not dangerous. Not like shark.

But not like her, either.

Humans, she decides, make little sense. And they smile too much.

And she can offer him nothing in return, at least…not with words. But she can sing to him - as a thank you. As an offering. Her siren pack had once said his kind liked to be sung to, that their siren’s hypnotic, low timbre was soothing to them. Calming.

She just wants him to stop _talking_. So much talking and she understands so little, and everything is _so loud_ above water. She doesn’t like it here, above water.

Then there’s a knock at his dwelling and the song in her quiets, fades, when it’d once poured out of her mouth like flowing water. The strange man smiles at her and says it must be the doctor. Oh no. _Doctor…like healer._ And she is not like them, these humans. She remembers the stories, of what it’s like to be discovered. To be hunted. To be killed. And she can’t risk being discovered, or they’ll kill her.

She’s sure of that much at least and a chill runs down her spine. Right over where her dorsal fin should be, but isn’t.

While he attends to this doctor, terror gives her flight and she makes good use of it. _Must go. Must hide._

She opens the window and flees. Running is hard. Running hurts. She’s not used to having legs…legs are irritating and _heavy_. But she finds shelter away from the strange smiling man and his healer-doctor.

She is safe…for now.

* * *

She awakes sometime after dawn and stretches, looks at her new legs. They are…strange. And they come with little - _little fins attached._ Yes, little fins. She stretches her feet and fins and decides that humans are strange indeed.

Then a tiny woodland creature skitters across the floor and she pounces. Slowly. Careful. Mustn’t scare prey, makes it taste bad. _Yes, okay._ She lifts the squeaking animal up to her face and studies it. It chitters and tries nibbling her front fins - fingers? - and then she smiles and decides yes, this will do.

Its heartbeat is strong. Not enough meat for the pack, but enough for her.

So she feasts, chewing and snarling and crunching meat from bone. Then licking it clean and wiping the stray blood with her hand. Humans…don’t like blood.

From her perch on the landlocked boat, she sees something fluttering in the distance. More clothes. Things to cover her feet and fins, her cold arms, her torso… _yes, okay._

This will do. She takes the one that looks like it’ll fit best. Its colors remind her of dolphins and coral reefs. _Home._ The sea is so close, it’s like she can almost smell it. But she can’t go home yet. She promised she’d find sister, and bring them all food. As deep and vast as the ocean is, they are running out of food. The fish are all disappearing, or they die and wash ashore. So she continues on.

* * *

She walks. And she walks. And she walks, until finally she reaches town. The humans…they puzzle her. Talking, making strange gestures and noises, and they make this - _this sound with their mouths and their chests at the same time._ She doesn’t know what it means, but they seem to smile when they do it. She wonders if it is painful.

And they ride around on these odd pieces of wood, or twisted metal, and sometimes the metal has _wheels_ attached. She has to dart out of the way before a man hits her with one - he makes an odd sound and tells her to _be careful of the board, dude!_

What does that mean?

Sister was right. Humans are strange and puzzling.

She keeps walking along, the ground underfoot cold and wet. Perhaps she should’ve taken feet coverings earlier - her feet and little fins are getting cold.

A woman stands outside, sweeping leaves away and announcing her offerings for sale. Perhaps trade? What the woman offers for trade, she doesn’t know. But then she hears it: the word _mermaid_. And that is her. _She_ is a mermaid.

She looks up, into the woman’s face, and the woman falters and her speech fades. And it is like…it is like she knows this woman with warm brown skin and wavy hair, even though they have never met before. But they are…they are _one_. They are similar. She does not know how, but she is sure.

The siren’s song in her starts again, a slow, melodic hum in the air around them. It is like it is reaching for the other woman, calling her home. She wishes she could say, _come home with me. Come home to the sea._

But she does not have the voice for that yet - nor the language to speak it. How horrible, this life, always looking and listening but never speaking, rarely singing.

A passerby jostles her shoulder and someone’s monstrous vehicle swerves on the road somewhere behind them. She keeps walking, decides the pretty hybrid human can wait another day. Besides, the song did not work. The human does not follow her.

* * *

She follows the scent of the sea and the salt in the air until she comes to the docks. This…is what humans call them, she thinks. There are few humans here, and she will not be disturbed anymore. Gulls cry overhead as the sea laps at the fishing boats, still and unmoving. She does not know why they don’t move.

Then she finds it - a great, big, hulking net like the one that took sister. It wasn’t meant to take sister. They’d been playing, hunting, working as one to find food for their beloved tribe. And then sister had been caught with a school of frightened and frantic fish.

And now, sister is gone.

She’d been anguished, then, calling for her over and over. But sister could not break free.

So now she will break her free, and find them both food.

* * *

How long does she spend walking? _So. Much. Walking._ Her foots crunches on something sharp, painful, and she whimpers like a scared baby dolphin.

Her and her sister, they used to tease the dolphins. Thought they were skittish, too soft.

And now look at her, becoming soft. Like dolphin. But the cut _hurts,_ and she bleeds so easy on land. She does not think she likes land. Everything is hard and confusing and there are too many rules.

Finally, she finds feet coverings. They are bright like summer sunlight and come almost to her knees - why? Are humans so soft they get cuts on their knees too? She does not know. Humans are strange.

It is easier to walk now, with things covering her feet. Hurts less. She decides less pain is good. Her human skin is so _fragile,_ less tough than her thick siren’s scales. She misses her scales, misses the water. But she needs to find sister.

So she keeps walking. She finds a miniature version of the thing that took one of the fishing sailors, she thinks called a toy. It’s perched just outside where a tiny human is watching something on a flickering box. They don’t notice as she plays with the toy, spinning its singular rotating wing around and around. She watches the flickering box for a moment, watches a moving drawing of a seahorse say: _I am Ryn._

She hasn’t spoken since she arrived here, on land. It is hard and she hasn’t seen the need. But this sounds short, simple. And she needs something to call herself here anyway. Humans like names, and she is pretending to be one after all. So she tries out the sounds herself, and slowly says, “I…am…Ryn.”

The tiny human child pops his head up and smiles at her like he knew she’d been there the whole time. “Hello, Ryn.”

She startles and darts away.

And that is when she meets another strange man. But not like the one from some nights ago. This one is not as tall, smaller, and smells different. Smells…odd. Like the fuel from his car and something else, something acidic and smokey and _bad, dangerous_. But she is curious about humans, and so she goes to him. She says that she is Ryn, and he does that smiling thing like the tiny human boy from before. Except it is different, somehow. She doesn’t like it when he does it.

* * *

Ryn accepts his ride to somewhere even though she doesn’t know where somewhere is. He talks too much and she doesn’t like it. A strange heat comes from inside the car and it’s too warm. She feels itchy. Suffocated. Like there isn’t enough room in the car, enough air.

He offers her something to drink and she takes it. It has a sharp, acidic taste like the way he smells and she coughs. He makes that wheezing sound low in his throat that she thinks is human laughter, but it sounds all wrong.

She doesn’t like it.

And then he stops driving, and they are on a deserted road in the woods somewhere. It’s growing dark outside, and there isn’t anyone else around. That’s not good, she thinks. He moves away from the wheel that controls the car and turns off the engine. And then he looks at her, and his gaze is…hungry. Like shark. Like hunter.

No, no, no. _Danger, dangerous._

Then he makes it worse. He tries to touch her thigh, her arm. She hisses and looks away from him. So he puts her hand in his lap instead.

He says things to her, vile things in a heated voice as he sips at the amber-colored liquid he’d offered her earlier. Like his whispers are supposed to make it better. Like his drink is supposed to make it better. Both only repulse her and she wants to _get away._

He strokes her cheek and murmurs that her skin is dry. She hadn’t planned on killing him before, but now…

Now his hands and mouth are all over her. It is too much and she doesn’t like it, _doesn’t want it_. Human mating rituals are foreign to her, different than the siren ones she knows. But she is sure about her own mating and when she wants it, because it feels right. And she is sure she _does_ _not_ want this, because _it feels wrong._

His body is hot and strong atop hers, and he doesn’t let go even when she shoves at his shoulders and claws at his throat. And he keeps calling her little girl, like she is a human child. She doesn’t like that either. Human children are too young to mate.

Now she knows he is a threat. Threats must be dealt with. So the vile human man will die.

When he reaches for her again, Ryn slams him against the windshield. He screams at the sheer force of the blow. With his throat locked in her hands, she snarls at him and snaps his neck before does slamming him against the pane again. And again. And again. Until the glass is cracked and streaked with his blood - it looks like a spider’s web. She smiles because it is pretty.

Then she throws him through the windshield to make sure he is _dead_.

He shouldn’t have done that. Oh well. Ryn wipes his blood from her mouth and leaves the wrecked car and bloodstained jacket in the woods.

Humans are strange, indeed.

* * *

Later in the day, she finds a strange place on land, where the seals sometimes go at high tide. They make low grunting noises at her as she follows a crowd of humans inside a nearby building close to the docks. They are different docks than the ones with all the fishing boats.

Inside, a pretty woman with warm brown skin and long braids down her back talks to a large group of human children. They ask her things and she answers them, but Ryn is not paying much attention.

Until, that is, she brings out _the food_. The children all makes faces of disgust and none of them try the raw fish slurry. Ungrateful things. She waits until they are gone to devour it whole, slurping it down in huge gulps when no one is looking.

Outside the facility, she can hear the sea lions grunting and barking. And the pretty woman from before is still talking to the children, though Ryn doesn’t understand much of what she says. But her voice is nice, low and smooth. Almost like a siren’s song.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and leans against the door to watch the humans. The sea lions start growling, spooked by her sudden re-appearance. They sense what the humans cannot - she is a predator. She could kill them all, easily.

The children’s leader (surely not…parent, yes? there are so many of them!) grows frightened and ushers them all back and away. The pretty woman with the braids apologizes for the sea lions and Ryn thinks it’s funny. Then the strange smiling man from the night before comes back and she runs from him. Darting inside and hissing for him to keep away.

He crouches low to the ground and vows that he won’t hurt her. She isn’t sure of that. But it’s getting hard to breathe, and her skin’s worse off than in the woods.

She needs to go. To the water. She needs to change, soon, fast, or she knows she’ll die. From his spot on the ground, the strange, smiling man says, “My name’s Ben. Friend.”

Slowly, with deep, heaving breaths, she says, “I am Ryn.”

The pretty woman with braided hair comes back and offers to call the doctor. _Why must humans insist on so many doctors?_ She hisses at the thought.

The two talk in hushed tones and she isn’t paying much attention, until they…well, until the pretty woman puts her mouth on the smiling man’s. Ryn is transfixed by the sight, not sure what to make of it. And then they say both _I love you,_ whatever that means, before the pretty one leaves again.

Shame.

The one called Ben says he’s gonna call a doctor for her. She can’t respond, doesn’t quite know how. She doesn’t know how long she waits for this human, this Ben, to get her his doctor. But she starts coughing, violently, gasping for air as her skin dries and her throat closes up.

She can’t breathe. And she’s out of time.

She falls to the floor and starts crawling towards the sea. It is dark outside, the moon but a sliver in the sky. She claws her way outside and down the docks and then splashes into the ocean at last, graceless and rushed.

The water is freezing on her skin and the pain from the change is immediate, searing.

Her clothes tear in the transformation as her bones crack and her skin shifts, changes, and grows scaly. Her teeth elongate and sharpen and a scream tears from her throat almost as easy as the siren’s song from earlier.

The water grows red with blood and vibrates with the force of her scream. Above her, the sea lions bellow and scream with her. Her hands turn into claws, bones crunching and re-arranging themselves as their webbed form takes shape. A dorsal fin sprouts from her spine and her legs bleed as they fuse into one long, powerful tail.

Something else appears in the water, glistening silverly bubbles surrounding them. She doesn’t know what they are but she knows…they aren’t like her. They don’t belong in the sea, they don’t smell like it. Which means, they’re a threat. They might even be… _a human._

She charges at them with a vicious shriek that echoes through the water. They drops their strange beam of light and it sinks down into the deep, forgotten, before blinking out of sight. She attacks, relentless and bloodthirsty as she scratches and crawls at the intruder. She bites at their jugular hard enough to draw blood and then shrieks again before moving in for the killing blow.

But then the human stabs at her with a sharp metal spear and she screams out in rage and pain. She could kill them, offer their body as food for the rest of the pack…but it’s best to retreat, lick her wounds. She’ll return for food, and for sister, another day.

Humans are strange creatures, indeed.

She’d do well to remember that.

**Author's Note:**

> So there we have it, ladies, gays, and theydies! Another foray into the Siren fandom down, another zillion and two to go. <3


End file.
